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Instruments & Innovation

24 items

This digital collection features selected scientific instruments, apparatus, and analytical tools from the Institute's museum as well as photographs, rare-book engravings, and illustrations depicting various types of equipment and machinery found in laboratories, manufacturing plants, and mechanical treatises. Inventions from book wheels to fireballs can be found here, alongside more modern innovations such as Gammacells and Geiger counters.

Spectators gather at night around a pyrotechnic fountain crowned with a statue of a child blowing bubbles—a symbol of vanity. A temple (decorated with geometric symbols, weights, measures, and various weapons and…

Fig. 8: Diagram of a bullet and its diameter.
Fig. 9: Geometric method for finding the diameter of a 1-pound bullet from that of a bullet of several pounds.
Fig. 10: Diagram to help determine the dimensions of…

Fig. 34: Technique for choking rocket cases with a turning wooden sheave.
Fig. 35: Tool for choking large rocket cases.
Fig. 36: Tool to form a round cavity in the neck of a rocket case choked with the tool in figure…

Fig. 204: Outward appearance of fortified castle set piece with diagrams of its inner construction and disposition of pyrotechnics.
Fig. 205: Statue of Mars upon a pedestal for use in public ceremonies of triumph.
Fig.…

Kazimierz Siemienowicz's treatise was used for over a century as a basic manual on artillery, rocketry, and pyrotechnics. It was originally published in Latin (1650) and was translated into French (1651), German (1676),…

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